


Distance

by BedeliaAnneRavenscroft



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: F/M, post Hannibal’s incarceration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-17 02:22:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21046733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BedeliaAnneRavenscroft/pseuds/BedeliaAnneRavenscroft
Summary: Dreams of her and trips to his memory palace are all that are possible for the time being, and he would rather them than nothing.





	Distance

**Author's Note:**

> Firstly, I’m really really sorry for my (super) long absence! I’ll explain more in the end note.
> 
> Secondly, apologies if this isn’t great. I’m definitely rusty (it’s been a while since I’ve written & since I’ve watched the show) but I found this stuck in WIP purgatory and I tried to salvage it.

“Bedelia.”

It feels like a sin to say her name now, while engaged within this place. As though the mere utterance of those four syllables will imprison her alongside him. Though she sought after and gained his permission to join him behind his veil, he would never wish for her to join him here: trapped behind a glass wall, caged, no more than a curiosity to be examined.

Yet, again, her name passes unbidden from his lips. Now, rather than being said in a whisper it is a question said aloud to the empty air between him and her – air, not glass; there is no barrier between them. His cell is gone, replaced with a darkness housing nothing but the two of them.

It is nothing more than a dream, and she no more than a figment of his mind, he realises. Dismay and relief make for a strange mixture, yet one he accepts gratefully. Dreams of her and trips to his memory palace are all that are possible for the time being, and he would rather them than nothing.

These past few years he has only seen her in the papers and journals he reads, as well as the occasional print-outs of TattleCrime articles that Chilton leaves for him, mixed in amongst his mail every so often, testing to see if they will produce any effect. Most of Chilton’s tools are blunt and ineffective. This tool, if discovered to be effective, could prove sharp enough to inflict significant torment. 

His head is always bowed when reading those articles, the angle obscuring any slight change in his impassive affect from the watchful eyes of Chilton’s orderlies, who stand by at his command to observe. He must be careful in those moments to resist the call of his memory palace. It beckons to him, calling to him with the promise of seeing her again. Only in memories, yes, but the simulacrum of her is as near to her as he may ever get again. It fills him with a strange sadness to think that. But he vowed long ago to savour dreams such as this when they come.

He extends a hand towards her. Marvels at the brilliance of the human mind as his fingertips brush something tangible, familiar in feel – her hand. He grasps it, holds it between his own. 

She appears now as she does in his most recent and perhaps final memory of her, dressed as she was their final day together in Florence, her hair holding the same meticulous curls she favoured during their time in Italy. But her smile is off. He recalls the way her eyes shone with something near triumph as they parted ways, her maintaining the upper hand over him while he watched on, reverent. Her copy’s smile is undeniably different. Her lips twist upwards ruefully while her eyes, hollow of emotion, look through and beyond him.

Suddenly his hand holds nothing but air. The copy of her is a few steps away, just out of his reach. The newfound distance between them is small, though. Instinctively he moves to close it...

...only to find that every step forward sets them further apart. The distance between them grows with each step, and it takes some time for him to realise why that is.

Each step he takes is one backwards, away from her, building a distance between them he wants desperately to close but manages only to widen. 

He says her name again, but now his eyes are open: the dream is gone, she is gone, and there is just empty air around him.

He wonders, laying alone in the semi-dark of his cell, if the dream would have ended differently had he made different choices in life. If he had not walked away from her and from their life together, would he have been able to close that distance? 

It is not something he wishes to dwell on. Not when he suspects that if he had chosen differently, he would have more than mere memories of her.

**Author's Note:**

> Soooo I’ve been gone for a long while. Really sorry to anyone who thought I’d just dropped off the face of the earth. Long story short, a lot of stuff happened in my life (offline) and to top it off, I sort of locked myself out of my emails and tumblr. But I’m back on here (finally) but I’ve had to make a new tumblr account. So if anyone wishes to follow me on there, I’m now specialagent-scepticscully


End file.
